Sure, it would have been nice to win on Thursday. After the Ortiz blast into the Monster Seats the Red Sox were leading, 2-1. Of course, a one-run lead is only as good as the next pitch, and as we saw many times this year, Lackey left with a lead and did not get a win.
Yalie Craig Breslow has been pretty effective most of the time, but Thursday was not his night. He walked the bases loaded, gave up the tying run on a sac fly, gave up the lead run on a Little League-style airball throw to third, then gave up another RBI single for good measure. 4-2 Cards. Koji came in with a typical 1-2-3 ninth that would have been a great save if the score had still been 2-1. But we had Strikeout Street coming up in the 9th...Gomes, Salty, Drew, Bogaerts. Nava pinch hit but joined the crowd with a K. Instead of "Dirty Water" we had organ music as we filed out.
But we didn't need that win. St. Louis did. If the Red Sox had prevailed it would have looked like we were already halfway to another World Series sweep. After all, the Sox had not lost a World Series game since October 1986. My 28 year-old daughter was only 1 year and 8 months old. My 26 year-old daughter was not born yet. The Road to Redemption shouldn't look too easy.
So we go to St. Louis tonight with the Series tied, 1-1. Now it's a best of five. True, 3 of the 5 are in St. Louis where we have no DH, but we'll have Papi playing 1st and Jake Peavy can strike out in place of Napoli striking out.
All the Red Sox need to do is win one of the three in St. Louis. Two would be better, obviously. But if they win one...and Sunday night is the best one to win...Game 5 will be a Best-of-3 with two of the three played in the Friendly Confines.
One more thing. We probably want the Sox to lose at least one game in St. Louis. That way we can have a World Series Championship clinch at home. And that hasn't happened since 9/11/1918.
No comments:
Post a Comment